A quiet, meditative biography of Dr Dre incorporating thoughts on utopian architecture, Le Corbusier and the evolution of rap. Kind of amazing. — thedocumentarian.tumblr.com
Major League Soccer has asked SHoP Architects, the firm that designed the new Nets stadium in downtown Brooklyn, to prepare initial designs for a Major League Soccer stadium in Queens.
SHoP's name is on a July Major League Soccer proposal given to city officials, and obtained by Capital. Last night, MLS confirmed that SHoP is indeed working on the initial schematic designs for a stadium in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
— capitalnewyork.com
Perkins+Will has partnered with Infinite Family, a U.S.-based non-profit organization that helps children and teenagers from African communities virtually connect with mentors around the world and designed LaunchPad, a prototype computer lab where young people in Africa can communicate with mentors via face-to-face interaction thanks to high-speed and high-tech capabilities. — media.designerpages.com
In a few weeks, construction begins on New York’s largest development ever. Hudson Yards is handsome, ambitious, and potentially full of life. Should we care that it’s also a giant slab of private property? — nymag.com
A team of faithful farmers have built a scale model of Lichfield Cathedral - out of straw.
The monument, which stands 50ft tall, 74ft long and 14ft wide, took three weeks to complete before it was unveiled yesterday.
Farmer Rob Gray, 50, decided to build the replica of 12th century Lichfield Cathedral which is near his 250-acre sheep farm in Whittington, Staffordshire.
— dailymail.co.uk
Originally a low income neighborhood of informal, mud brick housing, Sher-Pur was subject to government land grabs around 2004 and is now Kabul's wealthiest neighborhood. Built up using mashup of imported architectural designs from Dubai, the neighborhood is full of massive poppy palaces and narco palaces... as the international community pulls out ahead of the 2014 NATO withdrawal deadline, many of these elaborate mansions are sitting empty. Sher-Pur is becoming a ghost town of opulence. — sustainablecitiescollective.com
Conditions of scarcity demand new ways of thinking, an expansion of the role of the architect and designer outwards in order to function more broadly and imaginatively as spatial agents. In contrast to the regimes of austerity ... the territory of processes and networks opened up by scarcity is far more conducive to creative intervention. It is here that scarcity — which can seem at first a bleak prospect — can become the inspiration and context for constructive and transformative action. — Places Journal
What is the difference between scarcity and austerity? On Places, Jeremy Till contrasts the political ideology of austerity — imposed reductions of public services and social benefits — with the physical condition of scarcity — the measureable dwindling of finite resources... View full entry
a Starbucks coffee shop opened its doors inside a renovated space-age concrete gas station at Grand and Forest Park boulevards, the subject to an intense demolition threat just one year prior. By the end of the day, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch broke the news that another chain, drug store CVS, was backing off its plans to demolish the elliptical mid-century modern AAA Building in Midtown. Within a few hours, months of protest ended in celebration. — americancity.org
"I was very fortunate because the first building in Germany was the Museum for Applied Art, which was a competition that I won. After that I was invited to do other competitions. There's an appreciation for architecture in Germany that doesn't exist in many other places." — Deutsche Welle
The volunteers from LostNMissing Inc., a nationwide non-profit organization based in Londonderry, N.H., are scheduled to begin circulating posters about Jonathan Dailey, a second-year student at Boston Architectural College, around Allston early Sunday afternoon. — boston.com
Police say Dailey is 5 feet 9 inches, 160 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair, and a black stripe tattoo on his left bicep. Anyone who sees him should call District D-14 detectives at 617-343-4256. View full entry
"I am a naturally peaceful person, but I wouldn't be that upset if 'Vladimir' accidentally met with a baseball bat," - an art lover @twitter — The Guardian
The Guardian reported "A man has defaced a multimillion-pound Mark Rothko mural hanging in the Tate Modern gallery in front of onlookers. A police investigation is now under way into the vandalism of the US artist's work. The graffiti on the painting appears to read "a potential piece of... View full entry
Though unemployment is widespread among designers and architects, there exists a world of products, places and processes in desperate need of redesign. Imagine if designers — uniquely trained to listen and observe, and to improve the way things function, feel and look — were, like the Enterprise Rose fellows, embedded in schools, nonprofit organizations, health clinics, religious institutions and government offices, where they could experience community needs and behavioral patterns firsthand. — John Cary and Courtney E. Martin (NYT)
The main basis of his fame isn't built work but imaginary projects and sculptures and installations that might be called architectural art. An artist was what he wanted to be as a child, and when he graduated as an architect during the Brezhnev era he wasn't interested in working for "one of the big state institutions" which were the only likely sources of employment. So he started dreaming up "paper architecture", imaginary projects, in collaboration with the artist Ilya Utkin. — guardian.co.uk
Sometimes when you are new in a place you can really see it — Brian Eno
In this fairly dated video documentary by Duncan Ward and Gabriella Cardazzo multi disciplinary artist Brian Eno talks about imaginary landscapes, art, himself, New York, constructing sounds, installations and mainly about space. View full entry
He may look like a kid in a hoodie, but Bradley Garrett has a degree in anthropology and history, a PhD in social and cultural geography, and is about to take up a research post at Oxford University. But away from his lofty academic work, this bespectacled American is a trespasser – "urban explorer" has a nicer ring – who infiltrates abandoned buildings, sewers, bridges and office-block rooftops, filming and photographing them to bring these hidden spaces to public view. — guardian.co.uk